Glass Eyes
by vaudevillain king
Summary: Henry remembered, distantly, that Bambi's mother was dead.


_All characters herein belong to Konami. Any spoilers are unintentional as I haven't beaten the game yet. _

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Henry wanted anything, anything else but this.

He wanted to wake up feeling like he'd never shut his eyes to sleep, wanted nails in his windows and chains on his doors, holes ripping into his apartment walls like the gaping mouths of screaming children. Henry wanted steel pipes and graveyards and sickening rotting dogs nipping at his heels, he wanted tortured souls coming to devour him with the faces of the unborn, floating corpses reaching out to grab his heart and crush it. The haunting button eyes of pink rabbit toys. Dead cats in his refrigerator. Bloody handprints in the hall, _you should check on your neighbor soon_. Numbers carved into clothes and skin, subway stations bloodstained, foliage broken down and dug up, prison doors cracked and flooded, alleyways littered with corpses. Women butchered, men on fire.

He didn't want to be _here._

But Henry Townshend found, lately, that he never got what he wanted.

His throat ached, head pounded. He had long since stopped struggling, his body weak and battered, starved of sleep and food and sanity. He hung, like a limp rag doll or a hunting trophy, from ropes dangling from nowhere, coiling around his throat, his wrists. His shirt was a shred littered with bullet holes, and he felt his nose dripping sickly thick with blood onto his chest. He couldn't find the strength to cry, to scream or try to fight. Eileen was dead. Numbers carved into her back, Mother of the Reborn, realized. Footsteps echoing from behind a tiny prison window, a peephole in a chained apartment door. Circular glass eyeballs.

Walter was here, now, and Henry shuddered.

But it was no blood-blackened blue coat that met him, no dingy drape of blonde hair, no bemused and empty smirk. Henry looked down from his would-be crucifixion and met the pale blue Bambi eyes of a little boy, and he couldn't _breathe_.

"W-Walter…"

The babe, proud and simple, smiled.

"Mother will be here soon."

Henry wanted to cry. There was no reason, to this.

"Walter… please…"

"Mother will be here soon. You'll see. You'll stay and play, won't you?"

Henry was only waiting for the knife. He was so… tired.

"You'll stay, won't you, Mister Henry?"

He couldn't say a word. There was no choice. Children understand nothing in innocence. Ignorance. They make up rules, pretend reasoning. Apartment buildings can be parents, numbers will replace a loving home.

They create worlds.

"You'll stay…forever… and ever…"

_Don't go Out!! Walter. _

Henry drifted, realizing now that even in dying, finally, there would be no escape. Walter wouldn't let him go. Walter wouldn't let him leave. Not even his soul.

The tiny patter of a child's feet thudded, suddenly, into the heavy footfalls of bigger shoes. Henry remembered, distantly, that Bambi's mother was dead.

"Receiver…"

Henry looked up, and Walter was so _close._ Henry wished that he smelled like blood and death, so he could be revolted and somehow feel like he was _alive_. But, Walter was dead, and Walter was nothing. Just a number in a tally. A death toll.

_Like me. _

"It's almost time, Henry." Walter was smiling, his eyes cold and glowing. Henry found himself thinking of a kid awaiting Christmas morning, and wanted to throw up. "Mother…"

Henry blinked at bloodshot blue eyes, Bambi's dead husk staring up at him, leaning forward.

"Mother will take care of us, Henry. Mother will keep us… forever."

With blue eyes glittering and dead, haunting him, Henry didn't even notice the knife until it was cutting numbers into his chest.

Parting lips to scream, gasping for air against blood loss, Henry tasted metal and… skin?

Walter's mouth was damp, claiming, a gaping hole that tasted like panic, locked doors and possession. Walter's hands, one carving an ultimatum into flesh, the other pressing viciously, tugging at tangled brown hair, like Henry could run or hide from being devoured. But he could only hang there, bitter and blank, wishing he was dead and cold and buried, wishing he was climbing through a hole in his wall and disappear, wishing that Eileen was alive, wishing Walter would kiss him _harder—_

_So then maybe I can feel something. _

Dizzy, dying, bloodstained, the room around him full of churning gears and haze, Henry closed his eyes…

When he opened them, it was to the slow rotation of his bedroom ceiling fan beating out of the fog. His chest hurt, a dull ache, and it took him a few moments, in rising, to notice the bloody crayon scrawling of a child all across his wall, his photographs, the tightly shut windows.

_Mine forever _

Henry's heart skipped a beat

_And ever_

Or two

_And ever and ever_

For a second, his chest felt tight, and he remembered deer's eyes and blonde hair and _wanting_

_And ever and ever and ever_

And he almost fell back onto his bed, trembling, trapped. But instead, he dragged himself to the door, and made his way down the hall, relieved at the white walls.

_and ever and ever_

The air was still heavy, his very bones still shook with constant fear and exhaustion

_in Paradise. _

but he knew, at the very least, he wouldn't get what he wanted.


End file.
